NASCAR Bring Companies to AdvoCare 500 Race to Pitch Products

NASCAR are bringing with it companies pitching everything from pizza to pharmaceuticals to a new mango-strawberry energy drink to Atlanta this week.

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More than 100 companies have marketing or sponsorship deals with Atlanta Motor Speedway (AMS) in conjunction with Sunday night’s AdvoCare 500 race, according to AMS vice president of sales Greg Walter.

It’s all part of NASCAR as a marketing machine.

Many of the companies will be giving away product samples on the speedway grounds through the weekend, including title sponsor AdvoCare, which plans to hand out 150,000 samples of the latest flavor of its “Spark” energy drink in the track’s fan-zone area.

Across the way, Krispy Kreme will be offering free 12-ounce samples of its new “signature” coffees and free doughnuts Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings in the campground areas.

Among other products that will be sampled or demonstrated at display areas around the speedway: Schick razors, Papa John’s pizzas, Sprint 3D phones, General Motors 2012 cars and Hellmann’s mayonnaise.

Walter said: “It runs the gamut, We’ve even got a pharmaceutical company doing a ‘gout pit stop,’ where they explain what gout is.”

The company, Takeda Pharmaceutical, sells a drug used in gout treatment.

So why do companies find Atlanta’s NASCAR event, like others on the circuit, a major marketing occasion?

Walter cited the large, early-arriving crowds, the “festival atmosphere” and a multi-day schedule that has a truck series race on Friday night, a Nationwide series race on Saturday night and the main event, the Sprint Cup series race, on Sunday night.

“The track becomes in essence the fourth largest city in the state,” Walter said. “Imagine being able to sample a product to a whole town.”

Krispy Kreme said it chose the event as part of its new coffee launch because of NASCAR’s “family-friendly, family-oriented experience” and because fans attend from all over the country, with approximately 15,000 of the attendees camping at the track for several days.

Some companies use the race for business-to-business purposes, such as entertaining corporate clients, rather than for consumer marketing.

The event’s biggest sponsor is AdvoCare, a Texas-based direct-sales company that offers nutrition, weight-loss and sports-performance products. The company signed a three-year contract in May to succeed Emory Healthcare as the race’s title sponsor.

“I just felt, instead of buying a bunch of TV commercials for one or two nights, this would get us more value,” said Jan Wold, AdvoCare’s vice president of marketing. She said the company is “always trying to do something to build the brand, become a household name.”

“I knew the moment we talked title sponsorship and what we could do, it would be huge for AdvoCare,” she said.

In addition to having its name on the marquee and introducing its mango-strawberry flavor drink, AdvoCare will have 500 of its distributors at AMS.

Wold declined to say how much AdvoCare paid for the sponsorship, calling it “a pretty large investment” that will be increased by the added costs of marketing efforts in the fan zone.

AdvoCare is not new to sports sponsorships. It is the title sponsor of college football’s Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La., and has many sports figures, including New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees and auto-racing legend Richard Petty, among its endorsers.